Egypt hedges 35% of its petroleum until mid-2024

CAIRO – 3 September 2023: Egypt hedges a third of its oil and petroleum needs for fiscal year 2023/2024, which amounts to 35 percent, to avoid rising international oil prices, Ashraq Bloomberg reported citing an unnamed governmental source.

The hedging contracts that were agreed to be executed ranged between 75 and 80 dollars per barrel, and about 35 percent of the total oil needs that we import from abroad each year, amounting to 100 million barrels, have been hedged, the source told Ashraq Bloomberg.

Egypt decided to adopt the price of a barrel of oil at $80 in the budget for the current fiscal year, a decline of 15 percent from the price of a barrel in the previous budget, while the price of a barrel of oil currently ranges between 85 and 86 dollars in international markets.

Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Tarek El-Molla announced that 35 new natural gas wells will be drilled during 2024/2025 with investments exceeding $1.5 billion, to increase production rates and reserves.

The drilling of 10 wells were completed during 2022/2023 and resulted in a number of discoveries, the most important of which was the discovery of Nargis in the Mediterranean with reserves of about 2.5 trillion cubic feet of gas.